French presidential election 2017

[Camikaze]

When I see Fidesz defeated I will breathe more easily.

Far-right is relative, and Fidesz is not Jobbik.

 

[Commodore]

That's a reasonable course of action from a partisan perspective, but nevertheless not a good thing for democracy.

If the goal is to get/keep the corrupt official out of office then I'd say waiting until election or reelection time to release the info is the only reasonable course of action. This is especially true in modern democracies where releasing the info immediately may not result in the corrupt official being removed from office or the corrupt candidate from running for office.

Basically, the way I see it, corrupt politicians are going to use dirty politics to get themselves elected, so I see no problem in using dirty politics to prevent them from getting elected.

 

[metatron]

538 titled yesterday "Le Pen is just a gargantuan polling error behind Macron".

Well...



...there's this thing with American conservatives obsessing over the terms "Democracy" and "Republic".
But they appear to have it backwards.

Let me explain what a Republic is...

A Republic fixes potholes.

Spoiler :

And a Republic connects dots on the map in other ways, too.

Spoiler :

You may notice that filming something like this might be tricky (with a helicopter).
Not a problem, cause a Republic builds her very own warplanes.
(Cause, presumably, Anglogermanospannish planes are for suckers).


Seeing how such a Republic might, per chance have roughly the GDP of California you may wonder whether they ... what was it? Right... "launch their own damn satellites"?

Spoiler :

Anyway...
Dear Californian city-dwellers (and other pretentious coastal liberal know-it-alls),
let me take this opportunity to remind you that the only things you people make are derivatives, porn, terrible super hero movies, the labels on chinese vanity electronics...
... and election losses.

Thankfully you aren't any good at exporting the latter.
Thanks for that.
But please on occasion consider the option to shut up.
You're annoying everyone and you're a global embarrassment for Liberalism.

 

[onejayhawk]

Conservatives have an expression, "Oh well."

J

 

[Commodore]

538 titled yesterday "Le Pen is just a gargantuan polling error behind Macron".

Well...



...there's this thing with American conservatives obsessing over the terms "Democracy" and "Republic".
But they appear to have it backwards.

Let me explain what a Republic is...

A Republic fixes potholes.

Spoiler :

And a Republic connects dots on the map in other ways, too.

Spoiler :

You may notice that filming something like this might be tricky (with a helicopter).
Not a problem, cause a Republic builds her very own warplanes.
(Cause, presumably, Anglogermanospannish planes are for suckers).


Seeing how such a Republic might, per chance have roughly the GDP of California you may wonder whether they ... what was it? Right... "launch their own damn satellites"?

Spoiler :

Anyway...
Dear Californian city-dwellers (and other pretentious coastal liberal know-it-alls),
let me take this opportunity to remind you that the only things you people make are derivatives, porn, terrible super hero movies, the labels on chinese vanity electronics...
... and election losses.

Thankfully you aren't any good at exporting the latter.
Thanks for that.
But please on occasion consider the option to shut up.
You're annoying everyone and you're a global embarrassment for Liberalism.

Inferiority complex much?

 

[Arwon]

Fascists losing is good

 

[Commodore]

Fascists losing is good

Depends. In a democracy, whatever the people will is what is good. So if the French people had elected Le Pen, that would have been their will and would still be good regardless of her politics. However, they elected Macron and that is still good because that was the will of the French people.

 

[metatron]

Inferiority complex much?

Ok, next time the identity peddlers call you a name (thus advancing The Cause from a Glendale golf course cafeteria) i'll just chill my base.

 

[Arwon]

Depends. In a democracy, whatever the people will is what is good. So if the French people had elected Le Pen, that would have been their will and would still be good regardless of her politics. However, they elected Macron and that is still good because that was the will of the French people.

Nah that's a bad take.

 

[Commodore]

Ok, next time the identity peddlers call you a name (thus advancing The Cause from a Glendale golf course cafeteria) i'll just chill my base.

I'm just saying it's a little odd that you chose to celebrate your candidate winning by taking a shot at the US.

Nah that's a bad take.

So the will of the people should be ignored if their will doesn't coincide with your politics?

 

[Kraznaya]

Inno was wrong this time, but that doesn't stop him from being one of my favorite posters on the site. Opinions like his are precious to me - I'm a fan of there there being opinions that step outside of things like simplistic identity politics, or dichotomous American-style crap, and analyze the situation from a genuinely different standpoint. I much prefer wrong-but-interesting people to right-but-boring ones.

I get where he is coming from here - the (neo-)liberal/globalist political establishment really is deeply unpopular, and for good reason. It may not be monolithic, but different groups within it disagree mostly on details rather on than the underlying structure, so I will refer to it in the singular. For decades, it has been systematically increasing within-country inequality while making the majority of people's lives more precarious on a near-global scale. This takes number of forms. For instance, it makes developed-country workers compete with much poorer counterparts elsewhere while pocketing the resulting profits. It also takes some of those poor people from poor countries and imports them domestically in order to create an underclass of culturally/racially-different, non-citizen (more easily exploitable) competitors so as to squeeze working-class citizens, then insults those people by calling them bigots when they complain about the situation either culturally, racially, or economically. Still, while paying homage to diversity in theory, it destroys it in practice - for instance, in the United States, by systematically discriminating against Appalachian residents, other southerners, black people showing any trace of black culture, Native Americans from all cultures, all the different varieties of Hispanics, all the different varieties of Asians, and so on in preference to people speaking General American accents who are good fits for the elite monoculture. I could go on and on with both left- and right-wing complaints about the global elite and how the system is structured, but you get the gist.

And in Europe, it's even worse - not only is this sort of thing going on, but all the "united in diversity" countries with suitably diverse economies have been pegged to each other in a recreation of the gold standard - only without even the option of devaluing the local currency against gold! So they can't devalue with each other, and structural creditors and debtors tend to remain that way forever, with little option to restructure in any way other than to cause a massive economic depression. In the only case where the non-mainstream left managed to win an election anywhere in the Eurozone, following such a depression, they just fussed and moaned for about 6 months before surrendering to a program that can never work, and that was made even worse to punish the fussing and moaning, even though they were being advised by one of the world's foremost political economists*. There are good reasons to think the non-establishment right might have more balls than that.

Something like 2/3 of all people everywhere in the West are dissatisfied with the status quo. If enough of them could be united, they could swing the whole system to try something truly different (not necessarily 'better', but different) in any democratic country. As it is, though, they are fractured in a variety of ways that are easy to exploit. Only 24% of French voters thought Macron was a better choice than anyone else presented in the first round, but the FN is extremely unpopular among everyone who doesn't already vote for the FN, because of their neofascist past, their obvious dislike for French people of foreign descent and religion, the fact that Marine Le Pen advised by Phillipot is almost certainly the best they could possibly show and the next generation will be worse, and so on.

Despite all the complaints I've voiced above, I'm sure if I were French, I'd have wandered into the polls wearing a clothespin and voted for Macron, provided enough quality red wine and cheese to make that choice seem palatable even with a clothespin. If they don't let you show up obviously drunk and/or wearing a clothespin, I'd have had to abstain or cast a blank ballot, but I'm pretty sure I'd not have voted for Le Pen despite serious consideration.

As it is, I knew enough about French voting behavior from the Dec 2015 regional elections and, later, from polls of Fillon and Melenchon's voters that I could max out a $3000-limit credit card (in stages, getting worse and worse over time) and still rest easy knowing that I'd net +$1000, triple my losses from the Trump election. If Le Pen had taken over the French Republicans (fka UMP, fka whatever, fka the Gaullists) during the primary rather than running for FN, she'd probably have gotten 35% in the first round and I'd never have bet against her in the second. It's those crucial ~15% of people who will vote for a right-wing nationalist who passes him or herself off as a conservative that really matters, here. Le Pen did not have those people, and she was clearly going to be crushed the same as 18 months ago.

*Political economy is broader, and much rarer in this day and age, than economics. Economics is a way to use simplistic models to justify a particular type of political economy, papering over the simplistic nature by using equations and pretending to be physicists who actually know what is going on. Political economy is where it's at - the moment I hear someone talking political economy rather than economics, I listen. Especially if they managed to fool academia into calling them regular economists, then wrote books about political economy from the perspective of someone who actually does grasp the mathematical modeling BS well enough to know it's BS, then managed to get into a finance ministry anywhere. With that one exception, political economists are generally kept in humanities departments so they can't actually get anywhere and convince anyone who matters that things can be different.

The political discussion is interesting, but I cannot abide the opinion of one who equates fascism with liberalism as equal evils, as if to forget all the lessons of the past century. My own politics have as much of Hamon's ideas as Macron's, but they were in the only candidates in this election to assemble a viable vision for the future, rather than rant about real or imagined evils to manipulate the people in their discontent. I will only say that many of the negatives you blame on globalism can better be assigned to technological advance, and the rise and fall of industries that it causes. The politicians that stubbornly resist these changes rather than endeavor to reshape their societies to our times are only doing a disservice to their own constituents.

As for the hypothetical of Le Pen joining forces with the French center-right, I do not believe her winning the Gaullist primary had any chance of occurring. Fortunately for the majority of the French, fascism is a scar on the national memory that still lingers, not a benign adversary equitable to the profits of the rich. Look at the distribution of votes of France's senior citizens in the second round - generally a staunch bloc for any conservative party. They rejected Le Pen as vociferously as anyone.

 

[Arwon]

So the will of the people should be ignored if their will doesn't coincide with your politics?

That's a hell of a leap from "there is a difference between good and bad things".

 

[Commodore]

That's a hell of a leap from "there is a difference between good and bad things".

Well it seemed you disagreed with my stance that in a democracy the will of the people being done is a good thing, regardless of what that will might be. If you do disagree with that, then you must support the idea that sometimes the will of the people must be ignored. And since I doubt you would support ignoring the will of the people when they vote for something you support, it's not too much of a stretch to assume you think those instances in which the will of the people must be ignored are instances in which they vote for something you disagree with.

 

[Mise]

The political discussion is interesting, but I cannot abide the opinion of one who equates fascism with liberalism as equal evils, as if to forget all the lessons of the past century. My own politics have as much of Hamon's ideas as Macron's, but they were in the only candidates in this election to assemble a viable vision for the future, rather than rant about real or imagined evils to manipulate the people in their discontent. I will only say that many of the negatives you blame on globalism can better be assigned to technological advance, and the rise and fall of industries that it causes. The politicians that stubbornly resist these changes rather than endeavor to reshape their societies to our times are only doing a disservice to their own constituents.

As for the hypothetical of Le Pen joining forces with the French center-right, I do not believe her winning the Gaullist primary had any chance of occurring. Fortunately for the majority of the French, fascism is a scar on the national memory that still lingers, not a benign adversary equitable to the profits of the rich. Look at the distribution of votes of France's senior citizens in the second round - generally a staunch bloc for any conservative party. They rejected Le Pen as vociferously as anyone.

"Meta" comment: Bootstoots said he'd consider voting for an actual fascist because he liked her economic policies. I'm not too surprised that he likes it when inno makes the false equivalence you describe, because it appears to align with Bootstoots' gut instincts. I don't think his praise for inno's posts truly originate from an intellectual curiosity with "wrong but interesting". I think they originate from just the emotional desire to justify voting for the fascists for economic reasons. The intellectually robust response is to desire opinions that are based on fact and rationally thought through. Inno's are clearly neither.

 

[crabapple]

My bet is that Macron will be similar hated in 5 years time as Hollande is now. I am basing this on his promises that he has made in the election. He will continue failed neoliberal policies that made the mess in the first place. And then France really will be screwed. This will lead to a far left candidate against le Pen in the second round 2022.

 

[Akka]

For instance, it makes developed-country workers compete with much poorer counterparts elsewhere while pocketing the resulting profits. It also takes some of those poor people from poor countries and imports them domestically in order to create an underclass of culturally/racially-different, non-citizen (more easily exploitable) competitors so as to squeeze working-class citizens, then insults those people by calling them bigots when they complain about the situation either culturally, racially, or economically.

Damn, this hit far too close to home to not hurt.

There is a wide warning (which is exagerrated, but carry the point), that electing Macron just means "electing MLP in 5 years". I don't think it's really true, but that's because the FN is too rotten at the core, too based on populism and fascism, too lacking in what a real solution need (which is : a real plan and moral honesty). But that the FN manages to reach such high numbers, and that it doesn't surprise anyone anymore (Jean-Marie Le Pen reaching the secound round in 2002 was really a complete surprise and an earthquake in the country, it's hard to overstate the scale of the shock ; MLP has twice the number of votes, and people actually expected her to do better), show there is really a deep problem, and it's doubtful it's going to go away.

 

[Angst]

Oh, so he's a neoliberalist?

Crap.

Still better than authoritarianism though.

EDIT: Yea I know near nothing of the election. I've just seen Le Pen speak a bunch of places. I despise her.

 

[Mise]

5 years from now, France's economy will be doing a lot better; there will be more jobs and youth employment will rise to normal levels. France's place within the EU will be elevated once again to parity with Germany. The refugee crisis and the Eurozone debt crisis will be distant memories. Brexit will be a disaster, and a clear warning that isolationist, xenophobic politics is simply not an option: open, liberal politics is the only route to prosperity. As France's outlook improves, FN's voter base will diminish, and En Marche (or its successor) will continue to do well.

Calling it now.

 

[crabapple]

5 years from now, France's economy will be doing a lot better; there will be more jobs and youth employment will rise to normal levels. France's place within the EU will be elevated once again to parity with Germany. The refugee crisis and the Eurozone debt crisis will be distant memories. Brexit will be a disaster, and a clear warning that isolationist, xenophobic politics is simply not an option: open, liberal politics is the only route to prosperity. As France's outlook improves, FN's voter base will diminish, and En Marche (or its successor) will continue to do well.

Calling it now.

We will see then who is right

 

[Mise]

Indeed! Assuming environmental disaster, nuclear war, or a supervirus pandemic hasn't killed us all by then of course.